Nightcrawlers

Pronzini's popular Nameless Detective novels, which are a contemporary version of the hard-boiled detective genre, take us onto the streets of San Francisco with Nameless and his business partner, Tamara. In this episode, Tamara is kidnapped in the midst of a case, and Nameless has little time to find her. Nick Sullivan takes the hard-boiled style to heart in his narration. It's a "just-the-facts-ma'am" rendering in keeping with Pronzini's writing, and for the most part it works. He does have a tendency to read everything--from "kids kidnapped from schoolyards" to "she blew on her hands to warm them"--in the same measured, significant tone. However, when you're in the mood for a tough guy with a heart of gold, this will do nicely. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 21, 2005
The fast-paced latest in the longest-running PI series currently published shows Pronzini at the top of his form. Nameless's beat is the mean streets of San Francisco—but it's a vastly different city from the one inhabited by Sam Spade and the Continental Op. Gay-bashers seeking a thrill brutally beat a young man ("The crack of bone breaking damn near gave him a hard-on") and stalk gay lovers in the Castro district. Enter three seasoned investigators: Jake Runyon, Tamara and "Bill" (Nameless finally has a first name). When Jake learns that the young man attacked was his son's lover, he takes on the case—on his own time and without pay, vowing to beat the night crawlers on their own turf. Pronzini handles the two main story lines and multiple, shifting points of view with aplomb while unsentimentally exploring violence against gays with understatement, righteous indignation and genuine pathos. The author's legendary pulp-collecting nameless investigator shines in a number of affecting scenes in which he visits a famed pulp writer, Russ Dancer, who's dying of cirrhosis and emphysema in a Redwood City hospital. Pronzini just doesn't get better than this. Agent, Dominick Abel. (Mar. 2)

FYI:
Pronzini created Nameless for a short story in 1969; he appeared in his first novel in 1971.